Hey I am in the market for a 4 way sli mobo for the Z97 chipset, either the Ga Z97x Gaming G1, the Ga Z97x Gaming G1 WIFI Black edition, or the EVGA Z97 Classified. I am also open to other suggestions. I am going to use an i5 4690k. Thank you
You're going to Bottleneck your 4690k to the deepest fiery pits of hell.
4 Way SLI makes absolutely no sense in ANYONE's build for gaming because Scaling is never Ideal, you'd be wasting your money just for bragging rights, which is absolutely stupid. the more cards you add to your system the worse performance can potentially become. the most games support is 2-Way SLI or Crossfire. also no disrespect but you'd be an idiot to put 4 GPU's into a Mainstream Z97 Motherboard due to the lack of PCIe Lanes cause there isn't enough. I believe there is 16 PCIe lanes on the mainstream board (Someone correct me if i'm wrong) if you want the absolute best the you can grab two GTX 980s and put it on a Z97 Board and be Done with it. you'll have decent 4K performance. or if your preference is AMD you can grab two R9-290x's for less the price of two GTX 980s.
The only game that has that JESUS Scaling is Tomb-Raider. I don't know what AMD did to that game but Scaling is next to perfect on that game.
Why not just go X99 with an MSI SLI Plus if you're going to drop that much on a Z97 board?
4 Way SLI on Z97 is flakey as it is. Works sometimes other times it doesn't. Depends.
By all means get the EVGA. Put 4 GPUs in it. Spend the money and enjoy the other two GPUs doing absolutely nothing. After 2 Way SLI the scaling is pathetic. The last card may give negative to 0-5 more FPS.
even the X99 platform suffers from scaling with the exception of the Asus X99 WS ... it has a plex chip that makes all the slots x16 ... but you would also need the 5930k CPU that supports 40 PCI lanes
If you are going 4 way SLI on Z97 chipset your best options are definitely motherboards that have a PLX bridge chip which I believe there are only a few options that have it:
1) ASUS Z97-WS
2) Asrock Z97 Extreme9
3) MSI XPower AC
4) EVGA Z97 Classified
5) Both of the Gigabyte boards you mentioned
I usually would go with a Asus WS board if I was doing 3-4 GPUs or their ROG line but it is just a preference. EVGA also has a good reputation with multi-card configurations, but don't expect performance to be that great with 3 or 4 way SLI with any CPU outside of maybe a Core i7 overclocked to like 4.8GHz+ (rare and unlikely in general).
Good luck!